The author and Melissa Faliveno of Self Help
t was a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon when I arrived with the new Road Series’ GPCRSG guitar to begin setting up for the show at Pete’s Candy Store. Though they weren’t yet open to the public, the bartender was kind enough to let me inside for an early start. We set up the stage for the show and then took a few photos of the guitar. Early afternoon light poured into the vacant barroom, and aside from the faint clinking of glasses being stacked and music playing softly behind the bar, all was silent. In a few hours the red vinyl barstools would fill up with women and men drinking pints of Sixpoint, Yuengling, Pabst Blue Ribbon and cocktails of all stripes, music thumping through the room as it has every weekend for almost 20 years. But, for now, the bar was ours: quiet, smelling faintly of lemon and limes being cut for the late evening rush still hours away. Our show was an early one, set to start at 3:00 p.m. sharp. When Ryan, the sound engineer, showed up, we plugged in our guitars—the new GPCRSG and a 000-18 equipped with a soundhole pickup—to get sound levels. It was immediately clear that the Sonitone system was much louder than Billy Gray of The Cases 88 | MARTIN’S NEW ROAD SERIES